"At the corner of Market and Third Streets on Wednesday I saw a man attempting to cut the fingers from the hand of a dead woman in order to secure the rings. Three soldiers witnessed the deed at the same time and ordered the man to throw up his hands. Instead of obeying he drew a revolver from his hip pocket and began to fire without warning.
"The three soldiers, reinforced by half a dozen uniformed patrolmen, raised their rifles to their shoulders and fired. With the first shots the man fell, and when the soldiers went to the body to dump it into an alley eleven bullets were found to have entered it."
--Jack Spencer
"At that time the streets were like bedlam. Soldiers were in control, and while the regulars were almost perfect in their attempts to maintain order the militia men lost their heads. They shot some men without provocation and never thought to cry 'halt' or 'who comes there?'"
-- Frederick Lemon
"Not alone did the soldiers execute the law. One afternoon, in front of the Palace Hotel, a crowd of workers in the ruins discovered a miscreant in the act of robbing a corpse of its jewels. Without delay he was seized, a rope was procured, and he was immediately strung up to a beam which was left standing in the ruined entrance of the Palace Hotel."
"No sooner had he been hoisted up and a hitch taken in the rope than one of his fellow criminals was captured. Stopping only to secure a few yards of hemp, a knot was quickly tied and the wretch was soon adorning the hotel entrance by the side of the other dastard."
--Oliver Posey, Jr.
"While passing through a narrow street in the rear of the Emporium I came upon a tragedy. A rough fellow, evidently a south of Market Street thug, was bending over the unconscious form of a woman. She was clothed in a kimono and lay upon the sidewalk near the curb. His back was toward me. He was trying to wrench a ring from her finger and he held her right wrist in his left hand. A soldier suddenly approached. He held a rifle thrust forward and his eyes were on the wretch.
"Involuntarily I stopped and involuntarily my hand went to my hip pocket. I remember only this, that it seemed in that moment a good thing to me to take a life. The soldier's rifle came to his shoulder. There was a sharp report and I saw the smoke spurt from his muzzle. The thug straightened up with a wrench, he shot his right arm above his head and pitched forward across the body of the woman. He died with her wrist in his grasp. It may sound murderous, but the feeling I experienced was one of disappointment. I wanted to kill him myself.
"Along in the afternoon in my walking I came across a great huling fellow in the act of wresting food from an old woman and a young girl who had evidentally joined their fortunes. No soldiers were about and I had the satisfaction of laying him out with the butt of my pistol. He went down in a heap. I did not stay to see whether or not he came to."
-- R.F. Lund
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The California Reader
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